I have always enjoyed life, but it would be a lie to say I'm not enjoying my day-to-day experiences even more now that I feel so much better and look the part, too!!

Note to self - just read that most people should take 10-15mg DHEA when they need to supplement it, and that if you're extremely deficient, too much can feel bad, and you should probably start at 5mg in that case. Just checked my bottle - 100mg per cap!!! No wonder I reacted so badly to it the *one* day I took it! I can't remember exactly how, need to go back and re-read. I think it was no sleep or something.

Back on the research trail! Just donated something like 10-15 vials of blood to the cause of "find out Mamagrok's current bloodwork status." Will know in 5ish days, can't wait to check up on my freeT3:reverseT3 ratio, IGF-1, and abysmal pregnenolone.

I have always enjoyed life, but it would be a lie to say I'm not enjoying my day-to-day experiences even more now that I feel so much better and look the part, too!!

Note to self - just read that most people should take 10-15mg DHEA when they need to supplement it, and that if you're extremely deficient, too much can feel bad, and you should probably start at 5mg in that case. Just checked my bottle - 100mg per cap!!! No wonder I reacted so badly to it the *one* day I took it! I can't remember exactly how, need to go back and re-read. I think it was no sleep or something.

Back on the research trail! Just donated something like 10-15 vials of blood to the cause of "find out Mamagrok's current bloodwork status." Will know in 5ish days, can't wait to check up on my freeT3:reverseT3 ratio, IGF-1, and abysmal pregnenolone.

Congrats on passing the 50 lb mark!! I hope you're officially going to celebrate it now!

Life is not a matter of having good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

I celebrated it by posting it on FB so that all my beloved family and friends struggling with health issues can get inspired by the weight loss and maybe look into a way of life that can do so much more than weight loss! Got 108 'likes' so far, and several folks PM'ing me with questions, so I hope it can maybe help change someone else's life for the better.

Last note: It's been 5 days since last time eating somethign other than meat & fat (and last night, two bites of a fairly innocuous sweet potato casserole so my grandmother didn't realize I had only eaten turkey at her wonderful Christmas feast. I pushed around three other grain-y dishes. ). Status:

- still a tiny bit bloated. Not bad at all.
- Still weird pee smell in AM
- Still puffy face
- Thighs still up 1/2"
- Weight up only 1/2lb. I expect to see some huge changes in the next week, b/c all my pants are fitting loose in the rear & thighs!!

I measured to see where the 3lb came from two days ago ... my arms, of all things! Lost 1/8" on upper arm & 1/4" on forearm ... that's a lot for a forearm! Wonder why it's coming off my fairly lean arms instead of my not at all lean legs! (Still 23" there!)

Results
- Energy: 5.4 Mood: 6.5 I felt like I should be able to fly, mood-wise, but my body didn't want to do much
- Bloating: 2.5m AM. 3mPM.
- Skin: almost smooth. No pitting. Pink nose. Less dark circles.
- Sleep: 11-8:30 - awake from 5:30-7 for no reason. Wasn't much sleepy then, either. NEEDED NAP by 3pm. Unavoidable by 5.

Doing circadian T3 - taking 1gr NDT 1.5hrs before waking. I'll switch to 1.5gr tomorrow. I think it might be working, but is hard to tell b/c I've been sick on and off for 4 days.

Thyroid still feels hard. I"m typing this on the deck in a thin long-sleeve shirt & jeans & sandals. It's 45 degrees and I don't feel cold at all. I could stay here forever. I also spent all day yesterday inside my 68 degree house in a t-shirt. I used to have to wear sweaters at that temp inside.

HELLO COLD ADAPTATION! It makes me feel like such a brute, so in tune with the outdoor world,

Magnesium. I take Magnesium L-Threonate, and use Magnesium oil on my skin.

If I had to say how I did it, it would have to be ambiguous. What I did was specific to me, but the principles could be applied to all, I think.

In general, I'd say just go primal. If that's enough, and you lose all excess fat, fabulous. You're not very broken. If it doesn't, or works just a little, or works then stops too soon, then it's time to bio-hack.

I think the first steps for anyone in bio-hacking should be a free T3 & reverse T3 test, then looking at lipids (if LDL stays too high on primal, there's very likely a hormone conversion problem), estrogen & testosterone, & (gold mine) the Metametrix GI Effects test, which will show if your gut bacteria are predisposing you to fat collection (mine were), whether you have fat malabsorption (I did, bad, and that meant I had to get off wheat, ALL wheat, stat), & whether you're reacting in an autoimmune way to wheat (I was). Oh, and a 24-hr salivary cortisol test.

My sex hormone levels & free T3 & LDL showed that I wasn't converting LDL to sex hormones (for lack of T3), & that what I was converting had been going to cortisol for so long, that my adrenals weren't functioning well anymore and I now had low cortisol *and* low sex hormones! Combine that with low thyroid function & no wonder I felt like crap! And couldn't lose weight well!

So, long story short, I was eating primal plus one serving of sourdough whole wheat per day when I started. I couldn't lose weight, and was actually gaining. When I dropped that one serving of whole wheat, I started losing, and continued losing 1/2lb per week for two years. Then it stopped again, and that's when I had to face my huge digestive problem, which was showing visibly by unstoppable bloating. That took getting rid of dairy (what little I was having was raw, grassfed, high-fat, & fermented) (I had had so much damage done to my gut by wheat that I am now reacting to dairy, as well, so any of it seems to be continuing my malabsorption problem), switching to seasonal carbohydrate eating, & taking ox bile to help with my gall bladder function & fat absorption.

The ox bile + losing all carbs for the winter have done the trick of re-starting weight loss, at last. This week is the first time it's moved since last spring, and it's just falling off. I think it's a combination of fat & water loss (I've been retaining water all over for unknown reasons for years). It's like magic.

But that's not going to be someone else's path. Anyone struggling to lose weight needs to know why his body is holding on to it. (Oh, yeah, I should mention the leptin reset helped, too, to convince my body it could burn, instead of store, excess calories, and it also helped to cure my long battle against sugar addiction & binge eating disorder, which certainly contributed to being able to reduce caloric intake naturally & without pain!) And when he knows that, he can work on fixing those underlying causes, and when they body knows it's going to get what it needs to function properly again, it can let go of the weight.

Can you do it by hunger & exercise? Sure. But that's much less likely to work long-term, and not going to leave you with far better lifetime health when you're done. I worked hard, but I worked hard intellectually, not by starvation & sweat. (sweat is good, but for fun, not for caloric deprivation, lol)